"Mambo Mambo Magsaysay"...thus went the chant that shaded my first perception of Philippine politics on March 17, 1957. Observing the tears and the sad faces of adults around, I sensed a profound grief undeniably brought by the tragic death of President Ramon Magsaysay. Literally transfixed, the hardness of the one centavo bronze coin enclosed within my palm jolted me back to my designated chore: the one centavo coin I had to bring to a store down the bend of the road to buy my mother one bottle of vinegar, 1/4 kilo salt, a sachet of pepper with one bay leaf in it; and my mother admonished me never to forget to ask the store owner for 3 cloves of garlic as 'tawad'.
I really did not know why Carlos P. Garcia had to take over, but assuming the post of a very popular predecessor could have been a daunting task for him; especially that I overheard elders talking about the Huks, land distribution, US military bases, trade agreements and Japanese war reparations. Anyway, he could have had a good track record on these delicate issues lest he could not have won the ensuing presidential election.
It was such a happy time then: on harvest times, our little feet would trod vast areas of land owned by wealthy Filipino landlords. Partition of harvest between landlord and tenants was always accompanied by grand festivity with lots of food and wine, games, singing and dancing.
It was amid this orthodox setting that Diosdado Macapagal, the poor but intellectually gifted progeny of Lubao Pampanga, himself deeply soaked in the patron-client system prevalent in the country at that time, was elected Philippine President in 1961. During his regime, with one peso coin I would be going home grappling a dozen egg; with two one peso coins, my mother would be able to buy one full 'tiklis' of freshly harvested eggplants for her 'alagas' in the pigsty; dollar exchange was 1:2. Philippine made products was second to Japan in quality: if it was not from USA or Japan, much better to stick with local goods.
If political issues surrounding the resounding defeat of Diosdado Macapagal to Ferdinand E. Marcos in 1965 did not rouse any interest in me, it could had been because 14-year-olds then were not allowed to meddle in adult matters. But I can reckon that with a bottle of coca cola costing 30 centavos, I still had enough coins to be stashed away from my one peso daily allowance; that 10 centavos was enough jeepney fare for my father to bring me to Luneta, which according to him Imelda converted into something like the Central Park of New York. Super highways and grand edifices sprouted like mushrooms. Ferdinand Marcos had done us proud; his re-election was marked with grand celebration.
Nonetheless, due to non eligibility for a third term, he, who had never known defeat was mulling over an inevitable loss by default. Flaccidly swimming with the tide of my own growing up pains, I was one of those young ones caught unaware by the turn of events. The beginning of 1970 marked the awakening of the Filipino youth: the very same youth called "Marcos' babies" for they had never known any president but him. The hollowed ground of UST was constantly bombarded with Molotov bombs thrown by traditionally docile Thomasian students. Iconic student leaders: Emman Lacaba, Laurie Barros, Liliosa Hilao and of course Edgar Jopson were caught, detained, tortured and eventually disappeared . Beatles crazed, movie dazed and party going youth all over the metropolis rose from their apathy and transformed into gallant freedom fighters standing up against perceived tyranny and oppression.
Beginning with the First Quarter Storm of 1970, the grounds was perfectly ripened for the promulgation of Martial Law on September 21, 1972 . Behind curtailed media came whispers of politicians and known personalities arrested and taken to undisclosed places, of Congress abolished, of country's wealth passed on to cronies. Many believed it was the darkest moment in our country's history.
But for the rest of us, life went on. Due to rigid regulation, every news was sanitized: crime rate was at its lowest, people were disciplined; with bureaucracy abolished, solution for massive corruption was supposedly within reach. Riding with Diosdado Macapagal's remarkable achievement counteracting former President Carlos P. Garcia's Filipino first policy that shifted economic control from foreign hands to few Filipino elites, President Marcos dramatically eliminated the remaining Filipino oligarchs thus painting a perfect scenario for economic liberalization. Land distribution was melodramatically implemented.
When I served the mandatory 6 months rural health service in 1976, at the surface, there was peace; there was prosperity. The medicine cabinets were full, health and medical needs were certainly delivered; at 1:6.4 dollar/peso exchange rate, prices of basic commodities were still within reasonable means: with 500 pesos, I would certainly go home with a kilo of hotdog, one big can of Nido, a kilo of sugar,1-liter bottles of condiments and cooking oil, 2 long bars of laundry soap, 1 bar of bath soap and 1 bottle of shampoo. Had I the means, I could have brought home a brand new Toyota corolla with 30,000 pesos. With electrification and electronic progress, standard of living was higher.
But then, truth had a way of surfacing out: the noise barrage on the eve of the 1978 election reverberated through the halls of the palace, yet for the third time Ferdinand Marcos got the title. The rest was history: Lupus got the best out of Marcos' mind and body, Benigno S. Aquino was assassinated, Marcos won on the 1985 snap election until he was replaced by Corazon C. Aquino after the first EDSA revolution: I was there. Peso:dollar exchange rate then was 1:12.55.
With press freedom stifled during my formative years, I never really learned how to catwalk with media frenzy. It was just like an infant thrust into adults' life where it had to walk and run when it had not learned yet how to stand.
The same media that benefited from the freedom that the Cory administration restored, was the same media that impregnated the Cory administration with harsh criticisms: kamaganak incorporated, conservative economic approach, Hacienda Luisita's SDO, unarmed peasants massacre in Mendiola, pro-Us bases stance, restoration of oligarchy, among others; call me naive but what really bothered me most then was raising my two boys amid endless power interruptions and soaring prices of commodities. Nevertheless, at any extent, who would not credit Cory Aquino for being instrumental in bringing back democracy, in surviving 7 coup attempts, and peaceful passing on of the baton to Fidel V. Ramos in June 1992: a feisty feat for such a soft spoken amiable lady.
Six years through after restoration of democracy, Steady Eddie, with a tobacco between his teeth, posed like a tiger ready to lift the economy up: and that he definitely did but not without censure from his critics, not without charges of corruption: PEA-amari scam, Clark Centennial Expo Scandal, Wikileaks expose'. Personally though, I felt the country's economic gain. He had all the chances to revise the constitution promulgated during the revolutionary Cory government: but maybe it was just too early then. He could have resorted to parliamentary form of government to extend his term, but for sure the newly awakened populace would never let him. So in June 1998, he officially turned the rein to Joseph Ejercito Estrada who won the presidency with the biggest margin in Philippine history.
Dwelling in details on the celebrated case of President Erap would now seem superfluous. Enough it to say that the unprecedented conglomeration of patriotic Filipinos with the best of minds, expertise and intentions with which a very popular president was working with, could had been our coupe d' grace from poverty and could have catapulted our country back to its original high economic rank in Asia. However, the down-to-earth shady "Asiong Salonga' character that dramatically endeared him to the masses, was the same persona, his nemesis indiscriminately dug in to expose the skeleton in his closet to form an unconstitutional basis for the usurpation of his mandate in the backdrop of EDSA II uprising: I was there. The many loopholes in Erap's reputation that did him in was the key to the inauguration of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as President of the Philippines: a choice that even the conspirators of the said revolution could not and would not patronize.
Gloria Macapagal: the golden girl who lived in Malacanang at 14, classmate to Bill Clinton in Georgetown, master and doctor of economics, was unearthed by Cory Aquino from a professorial job in Ateneo and was formally introduced to governance as undersecretary of trade and industry from whence she started to rise and shine....then once again the rest is history: past, present and future. Likewise, I must say that her snobbish short-tempered character partly did her in. While Marcos and Erap had their raucous loyalists to protect them, GMA has only silent sympathizers.
Now, the whole nation is watching with withheld breaths: GMA's and P Noy's Magics: trick or treat?, the live orchestrated version in full animation. Is it affecting our nation and us, the Filipino race? Amid this melodramatic war among titans, 1s there anybody watching over our economy? Now that the Philippine centavo has gone down the drain, is there anybody making moves to prevent the same travail on our existing peso bills?
We have to know our past and the history behind events to understand where the recent actions and reactions are coming from. Whatever will happen in the future depends on how we deal with the issues of today: for another wrong move will definitely contribute to the unending travails of the Filipino people: the Filipino 'masa' who are now being fed with selfish propaganda by the chosen elites on whose hands the fate of this nation had been and is being entrusted.
Beginning with the First Quarter Storm of 1970, the grounds was perfectly ripened for the promulgation of Martial Law on September 21, 1972 . Behind curtailed media came whispers of politicians and known personalities arrested and taken to undisclosed places, of Congress abolished, of country's wealth passed on to cronies. Many believed it was the darkest moment in our country's history.
But for the rest of us, life went on. Due to rigid regulation, every news was sanitized: crime rate was at its lowest, people were disciplined; with bureaucracy abolished, solution for massive corruption was supposedly within reach. Riding with Diosdado Macapagal's remarkable achievement counteracting former President Carlos P. Garcia's Filipino first policy that shifted economic control from foreign hands to few Filipino elites, President Marcos dramatically eliminated the remaining Filipino oligarchs thus painting a perfect scenario for economic liberalization. Land distribution was melodramatically implemented.
When I served the mandatory 6 months rural health service in 1976, at the surface, there was peace; there was prosperity. The medicine cabinets were full, health and medical needs were certainly delivered; at 1:6.4 dollar/peso exchange rate, prices of basic commodities were still within reasonable means: with 500 pesos, I would certainly go home with a kilo of hotdog, one big can of Nido, a kilo of sugar,1-liter bottles of condiments and cooking oil, 2 long bars of laundry soap, 1 bar of bath soap and 1 bottle of shampoo. Had I the means, I could have brought home a brand new Toyota corolla with 30,000 pesos. With electrification and electronic progress, standard of living was higher.
But then, truth had a way of surfacing out: the noise barrage on the eve of the 1978 election reverberated through the halls of the palace, yet for the third time Ferdinand Marcos got the title. The rest was history: Lupus got the best out of Marcos' mind and body, Benigno S. Aquino was assassinated, Marcos won on the 1985 snap election until he was replaced by Corazon C. Aquino after the first EDSA revolution: I was there. Peso:dollar exchange rate then was 1:12.55.
With press freedom stifled during my formative years, I never really learned how to catwalk with media frenzy. It was just like an infant thrust into adults' life where it had to walk and run when it had not learned yet how to stand.
The same media that benefited from the freedom that the Cory administration restored, was the same media that impregnated the Cory administration with harsh criticisms: kamaganak incorporated, conservative economic approach, Hacienda Luisita's SDO, unarmed peasants massacre in Mendiola, pro-Us bases stance, restoration of oligarchy, among others; call me naive but what really bothered me most then was raising my two boys amid endless power interruptions and soaring prices of commodities. Nevertheless, at any extent, who would not credit Cory Aquino for being instrumental in bringing back democracy, in surviving 7 coup attempts, and peaceful passing on of the baton to Fidel V. Ramos in June 1992: a feisty feat for such a soft spoken amiable lady.
Six years through after restoration of democracy, Steady Eddie, with a tobacco between his teeth, posed like a tiger ready to lift the economy up: and that he definitely did but not without censure from his critics, not without charges of corruption: PEA-amari scam, Clark Centennial Expo Scandal, Wikileaks expose'. Personally though, I felt the country's economic gain. He had all the chances to revise the constitution promulgated during the revolutionary Cory government: but maybe it was just too early then. He could have resorted to parliamentary form of government to extend his term, but for sure the newly awakened populace would never let him. So in June 1998, he officially turned the rein to Joseph Ejercito Estrada who won the presidency with the biggest margin in Philippine history.
Dwelling in details on the celebrated case of President Erap would now seem superfluous. Enough it to say that the unprecedented conglomeration of patriotic Filipinos with the best of minds, expertise and intentions with which a very popular president was working with, could had been our coupe d' grace from poverty and could have catapulted our country back to its original high economic rank in Asia. However, the down-to-earth shady "Asiong Salonga' character that dramatically endeared him to the masses, was the same persona, his nemesis indiscriminately dug in to expose the skeleton in his closet to form an unconstitutional basis for the usurpation of his mandate in the backdrop of EDSA II uprising: I was there. The many loopholes in Erap's reputation that did him in was the key to the inauguration of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as President of the Philippines: a choice that even the conspirators of the said revolution could not and would not patronize.
Gloria Macapagal: the golden girl who lived in Malacanang at 14, classmate to Bill Clinton in Georgetown, master and doctor of economics, was unearthed by Cory Aquino from a professorial job in Ateneo and was formally introduced to governance as undersecretary of trade and industry from whence she started to rise and shine....then once again the rest is history: past, present and future. Likewise, I must say that her snobbish short-tempered character partly did her in. While Marcos and Erap had their raucous loyalists to protect them, GMA has only silent sympathizers.
Now, the whole nation is watching with withheld breaths: GMA's and P Noy's Magics: trick or treat?, the live orchestrated version in full animation. Is it affecting our nation and us, the Filipino race? Amid this melodramatic war among titans, 1s there anybody watching over our economy? Now that the Philippine centavo has gone down the drain, is there anybody making moves to prevent the same travail on our existing peso bills?
We have to know our past and the history behind events to understand where the recent actions and reactions are coming from. Whatever will happen in the future depends on how we deal with the issues of today: for another wrong move will definitely contribute to the unending travails of the Filipino people: the Filipino 'masa' who are now being fed with selfish propaganda by the chosen elites on whose hands the fate of this nation had been and is being entrusted.
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